The violence in the Mountainhead trailer isn't the billionaires' fault, obviously

Succession creator Jesse Armstrong's next project arrives on HBO on May 31.

By Drew Gillis  |  May 16, 2025 | 12:43pm
Images courtesy of HBO
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The violence in the Mountainhead trailer isn't the billionaires' fault, obviously

Jason Schwartzman’s Souper is the poorest billionaire in the Mountainhead mansion, and isn’t he just? HBO debuted the first full-length trailer for Jesse Armstrong’s latest wealth satire today, and it seems like the tech moguls (played by Steve Carell, Ramy Youssef, Cory Michael Smith, and Schwartzman) are quite literally trying to take over the world. “We could probably buy Haiti, or Belgium, those chocolatey assholes,” Carell’s Randall says as Souper talks about “handling” Argentina and Paraguay. 

How did we get here, you may wonder? That would appear to be the fault of Smith’s character Venis, presented at least in the trailer as the obvious Elon Musk stand-in. His social media platform is racist and shitty, in the words of Youssef’s Jeff, and full of generative AI that has apparently sparked waves of ethnic violence in the Caucasus. Of course, the whole AI element makes it even easier for Venis to dub any inconvenient violence a deepfake. “Not real. Heads don’t explode like that,” he shrugs. “How do heads explode?” counters Souper. 

Mountainhead is Armstrong’s first project with HBO since Succession ended in 2023. He wrote and directed the film, and reteams with Succession executive producers Frank Rich, Lucy Prebble, Jon Brown, Tony Roche, Will Tracy, Mark Mylod, all of whom EP here, with the addition of Jill Footlick. Mountainhead premieres directly on HBO on May 31.

 
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